Between 30th
October and 4th November I participated in a Power to You(th)
training course on Youth Empowerment, Employability and Entrepreneurship. The
training was organized for youth workers and youth leaders working directly
with young people. It took place in Beaufort, Luxemburg, a small village in the
beautiful region called “Little Switzerland” which is approximately 30km away from
Luxembourg City. The training was organized by the Luxembourg National Agency
and the 21 participants represented 15 different countries (Austria, Croatia,
Check Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Turkey
Power to You(th)
aimed to provide youth workers and youth leaders with creative, adaptable tools
and the inspiration to facilitate youth empowerment and to promote entrepreneurship
and employability of young people. We
explored the tool of Youth Exchanges as part of the Erasmus+ programme to be
able to use it in our work to inspire and empower young people to actively
participate in society.
Using non-formal education methods and activities (such as outdoor
work, experiential learning, and theatre and community interaction), this
training aimed at creating an inspiring, active and creative space for the
development of new ideas and exploring possibilities for youth employability
and entrepreneurship by focusing on youth empowerment tools. It gave us, the
participants, the possibility to discover meaningful roles and develop
different tools in our work around youth projects.
We also had the
chance to explore – as the locals calls - the City (aka Luxembourg City). We
had an amazing walk through the city and thanks to the local participants we
learned a lot of the history and culture of Luxembourg. We also had a great
dinner there with the Luxembourg National Agency and were treated to the local
specialities.
One of my favourite exercises and memory’s
is definitely when we spent a day on exploring the world of Erasmus+ and whether
it can be used as a tool for supporting the empowerment
process and how youth workers and youth leaders can support young people in
this process of reflecting and recording and learning to harness their skills to
increase future employability (with the aim that we will be able to create powerful activities
and projects with and for young people). To familiarize ourselves with the whole process of organizing/participating
in a Youth Exchange we received the most empowering task in the training. We were
randomly assigned groups, received a map
of the neighbouring forests, lunch bags and an exercise of coming up with an
imaginary person (complete with a detailed socio-economic description) and to take
that person with us for a small hiking tour.
During
the tour each group had to discuss each level of the process of a Youth
Exchange project (getting informed, applying, organizing, participating and
reflecting on a Youth Exchange project). We were walking in the most beautiful,
fairy tale like forest for 4 hours and created a whole story. Not just about
the imaginary person and her experiences, but we also created an imaginary
Youth Exchange program, with actual training plan, with the budget and its objectives.
But overall the hiking tour was more than a training exercise. The peaceful
environment, the beauty of the nature gave us new perspectives and provided a perfect
situation for self-reflection.
Overall the training was a big success, not
only did I gain
new knowledge, skills and experiences but also made new friends and
professional partners for future projects.
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